Arsenal went 1-0 down after 13 minutes when Tomas Soucek poked home Jarrod Bowen’s cross; VAR checked to see if ball had gone out of play, but original decision to award the goal was allowed to stand; West Ham went on to win 2-0 to give David Moyes his first win as a manager at Arsenal.
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta believes it’s a ‘shame’ that there’s no technology available to deliver conclusive results on whether the ball crossed the byline as his side were on the wrong end of another decision during their 2-0 loss to West Ham.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta said it was a “shame” that VAR was not clear enough to determine whether West Ham’s first goal in their 2-0 win over the Gunners should have stood.
Tomas Soucek tapped home from close range from Jarrod Bowen’s cross from the left byline on 13 minutes to give the Hammers the lead, but it was unclear as to whether the ball had gone out of play in the build-up.
A three-and-a-half-minute VAR check saw the technology look at the best angles possible before awarding the goal, with Arteta revealing the officials told him that the image was “not conclusive” – so the on-field decision stood.
I haven’t seen it, they only thing they [the officials] said was the image was not conclusive,” said Arteta in his post-match press conference.
It’s just a shame that the technology that we have is not that clear that we can say it’s out of play. It’s done, it’s gone and there’s nothing we can do about it now.”
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“So what we have to do is without that, win the game, and with the situations we had today, we had more than enough.”
Arsenal had 30 shots on goal and 77 touches in West Ham’s box – the latter statistic being the most on record since 2008-09 in a single Premier League match for a team who failed to score.
